Volcano Type: Caldera
Volcano Status: Historical
Last Known Eruption: 1970
Summit Elevation: 576 m 1,890 feet
Latitude: 62.97°S 62°58’0″SLongitude: 60.65°W 60°39’0″W
Deception Island (62°57′S, 60°38′W) is one of the most incredible islands on the planet. It is an active volcano in the South Shetland Islands, off the Antarctic Peninsula. Its unique landscape comprises barren volcanic slopes, steaming beaches and ash-layered glaciers. It has a distinctive horse-shoe shape with a large flooded caldera. This opens to the sea through a narrow channel at Neptunes Bellows, forming a natural sheltered harbour. It is one of the only places in the world where vessels can sail directly into the centre of a restless volcano.
Ring-shaped Deception Island, one of Antarctica’s most well known volcanoes, contains a 7-km-wide caldera flooded by the sea. Deception Island is located at the SW end of the Shetland Islands, NE of Graham Land Peninsula, and was constructed along the axis of the Bransfield Rift spreading center. A narrow passageway named Neptunes Bellows provides entrance to a natural harbor that was utilized as an Antarctic whaling station. Numerous vents located along ring fractures circling the low, 14-km-wide island have been active during historical time. Maars line the shores of 190-m-deep Port Foster, the caldera bay. Among the largest of these maars is 1-km-wide Whalers Bay, at the entrance to the harbor. Eruptions from Deception Island during the past 8700 years have been dated from ash layers in lake sediments on the Antarctic Peninsula and neighboring islands.
Deception Island is located at the south-western end of the South Shetland Islands, north-west of the Antarctic Peninsula. Deception Island has a diameter of 13-15 km and encloses a submarine caldera 6-8 km in diameter. Entry to the caldera is through a narrow passage on SE side of the island. Evidence of eruptive activity is preserved on the slopes of Mt Pond where a glacier has alternating layers of snow and ash. Eruptions at the volcano typically occur at multiple vents and may be aligned along fissures.
Originally posted 2010-08-20 05:00:38.
